


These Words are Knives

by nikolastesla



Category: Hello Charlotte (Video Game), Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Heart Wounds, Lance (Voltron) Angst, M/M, Slow Burn, Slow Burn Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-13 20:13:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13578123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikolastesla/pseuds/nikolastesla
Summary: Based loosely on the fictional disease Heart Wounds created for the world of Hello Charlotte by etherane, the RPG maker horror game. It is caused by harming another person emotionally which causes open wounds to appear on the body. When the wounds begin to heal, flowers bloom from the skin in place of scars.-------Lance never gave a second thought to how the others treated him until the flowers began to bloom....





	1. Seedling

After years of fighting, years of torture and tears, it amounted to nothing. From the deck of the Castle of Lions, the paladins stood and stared at the burnt corpse of the planet Earth.  
“Shit.”  
Lance, startled from whatever plane of existence his mind had fled to, turned his gaze to the former black paladin who stared with wide vacant eyes at what used to be their home. He’d never heard Shiro swear before. The sigh from his lips made the white lock of hair on his forehead flutter.  
“No.” It was a flat statement of defiance that fell unbidden from his mouth. Lance knelt and covered his mouth with his palms and swallowed the sob that sat heavy in his throat. Allura and Coran looked lost, exchanging a silent conversation between each other.  
He felt like his hear was being wrenched in half, torn between the family and life he’d built in space and the dead husk of the world rotating below.  
_Mi hijo, we will always be here for you…_  
“Mom-” He was choking on the emotions that rose with the bile in his stomach.  
In his mind’s eye he could see her, standing in the doorway of his family’s Floridian home. She was dusting off the flour from her hands onto her apron and her smile crinkled the corners of her eyes like the edges of pie crust. Her arms were extended to him and all he wanted to do was run home.  
Home.  
He looked up from his tear-filled hands to the grey rock outside the Castle’s windows. Somewhere in the ash below were the remains of his family. His mother, his father, his siblings – the youngest sister and brother who would run circles around him, his older brother who taught him how to fight and his older sister who showed him how to use face masks – all gone, all dead.  
_Mi azulejo, you had better send us pictures!_  
He couldn’t hold back the flood of tears any longer. They spilled down his cheeks and landed heavily onto the smooth metal floor.  
“No!” He slammed his fist down.  
Again and again he shouted until his knuckles were bleeding and he was vaguely aware of hands hooked underneath of his armpits that hauled him to his feet.

 

The door to his room slid open. Exhausted, Lance lifted his head. Keith stood with his arms crossed, his foot tapping the floor irritably.  
“You can’t stay holed up in here forever.”  
The Galran-human’s voice sounded metallic and sharp. His eyes were just as heavy as Lance’s, dark colors encircling them. Though his voice was devoid of any sympathy, it was clear that Keith hadn’t been sleeping well either; however, he would never admit it aloud. All sympathy for Lance had been drained from him and what remaining emotions Keith had were quickly converted to anger. Currently, the target for his anger was the former blue, now red paladin who hadn’t left his quarters for two Earth days – not even to eat.  
“Watch me,” Lance snarled bitterly.  
He flopped dramatically onto the bed and pulled the sheets around him tighter.  
“You need to get up and get moving—we don’t have time for you to act like a child.”  
The door to his room slid shut, soundlessly save for the small click that told Lance that he was once again alone.  
Unseen to all, a small cut had formed along Lance’s collarbone beneath his bright blue t-shirt. 

 

Keith swung his sword blindly at the robot while his mind was lightyears away from the training room. It was eerily quiet in this section of the ship. The only sound was the occasional scuffle and squeak of a space-mouse and the grating clang of metal on metal when Keith’s bayard met its mark. The robot’s head sailed off from its shoulders and collided with the training room wall. Keith flicked his sweat soaked bangs from his face and let out the breath he’d been holding.  
It was around two in the morning, Earth time, and the inhabitants of the Castle were asleep -- except for the member of the Blade who found it hard to sleep knowing they were orbiting what used to be his home.  
Home.  
He stabbed the robot’s head on the end of his bayard and lifted it up to examine it.  
Was Earth ever really his home? He’d lived alone for so long on Earth that he thought of the Castle more as ‘home’ than he did his shack in the desert. He’d never known his mother and his father had died years ago.... there was no reason for him to mourn. Disintegrated skeletons didn’t need second funerals. A frown tugged the corners of his mouth down when his mind wandered to the others. Pidge and Matt, Hunk, Shiro... and Lance.  
Out of all the humans aboard the Castle of Lions, Lance was handling the situation in the worst way possible.  
Keith pulled the robot head off the end of his blade and crushed it in his hand. Why did he have to be so...so frustrating? He flung the remains of the robot skull at the already dented wall and sighed.  
Lance was a complicated bag of emotions dressed in the caramel skinned shell of the former blue paladin. Something twisted unpleasantly in his stomach at the thought of Allura piloting Blue. He wasn’t sure why it didn’t sit right with him, but-  
The door to the training room slid open and Keith sheathed his bayard; he turned to see Takashi Shirogane walking solemnly into the space.  
“Are you okay?” The words tumbled out before he could stop them.  
Shiro shrugged his still-human shoulder and stared at something only he could see to the left of Keith.  
“As okay as I’ll ever be after seeing that,” He gestured with his Galra hand at the general direction of the planet below them. Or what was left of it, anyway.  
Keith nodded sagely and moved as if to leave. Shiro placed a hand on his shoulder and his eyebrows furrowed with sympathy toward the younger paladin.  
“You know...if you need to talk—”  
“I’m fine.”  
Keith brushed off the cold metal hand and stalked away to his room. He didn’t need conversation. He needed a cold shower and a bottle of tequila. Too bad only one of those things were available in space.

 

Lance’s body ached. He was curled in and around himself, buried in all the blankets he’d scrounged from around the Castle rooms over the years. A sharp pain in his gut told him he hadn’t eaten in at least forty-eight Earth hours. Lance’s long legs stretched out and his toes touched the cold metal floor. Resisting the urge to recoil from the icy temperature beneath him, he carefully unwrapped himself from his cocoon.  
He couldn’t remember when he’d last emerged from his room. For that matter, had he even taken a shower in the past week? His arms stretched, long and caramel, above his head and the bones in his back cracked satisfyingly. 

 

Over the past few days, many of the other paladins had attempted to coax him from his quarters. Shiro’s method included a long-winded speech about how he needed to be a better member of Team Voltron, how he once again failed them all, etcetera, etcetera. Lance shuddered involuntarily while thinking of that encounter. Without any energy left for his quick wit, Lance had shut the door in Shiro’s face and returned to his bed to sleep for another four vargas. 

The next to arrive had been Pidge whose approach was to pretend that nothing was wrong.  
_"Hey Lance, check out this new program I whipped up – it changes all the lights in the ship to orange instead of blue!"_  
Lance had frowned and folded his arms, _“Okay, so we’re just going to pretend that everything’s fine, huh? Like we’re not orbiting what’s left of Earth!”_ He barked out a bitter laugh and punched the button to close the door. Pidge’s hazel eyes were beginning to fill with tears and Lance swiped angrily at his face to prevent his own from watering. 

Of all the paladins, Hunk should have been the one to bring Lance back to life. He’d came knocking to his door with a tray full of what resembled chocolate chip cookies and a stuffed-up nose that told Lance his best friend had been crying.  
_“I...I made... here.”_ He shoved the tray to Lance’s chest and turned away, leaving of his own accord.  
Lance blinked and looked down at the tray of freshly baked cookies. The tray remained in his room for several quintents, possibly longer in Earth days, before he dumped them down the waste chute – tray and all. 

 

He shuffled to the small bathroom adjacent to his quarters and turned the light on, waving his hand over the sensor. The mirror showed how disheveled he looked. Something seemed....off about his appearance and it wasn’t just that he hadn’t kept up with his skincare routine. Lance peered at his own reflection, trying to figure out what was out of place. It hit him like lightning. A blue flower was pinned to the collar of his shirt.  
He narrowed his eyes and delicately took a hold of it.  
“How did that- OW!”  
Okay, so it wasn’t pinned to his shirt. It was attached to his skin.  
“What the quiznak...”  
He pulled down the collar of his shirt and gasped in horror at a line of bright blue flowers that stretched from his collarbone to the middle of his chest. Dried blood clung to the flowers and encircled the points where they entered his skin.  
In a panic he stripped his shirt off to find more flowers had bloomed across his dark skin, decorating his sharp hip bones and the edges of his arms.  
A garden was growing from his sorrow.

The paladins looked up in surprise when Lance shuffled into the dining hall. He took his usual seat beside Keith and wordlessly shoveled the green space goop into his mouth. Allura caught Shiro’s eyes and she raised an eyebrow, questioningly. He cleared his throat, trying to get Lance’s attention, but he was lost inside his own head.  
“Lance.”  
The red paladin’s head snapped up and he stared owlishly at the former black paladin.  
“It’s nice to see you,” Shiro’s voice sounded flat and... disappointed.  
Lance’s heart ached, and a searing pain inched its way across his forearm. He winced and placed a hand over his sleeve where there was already a mass of flowers beginning to bloom.  
“I thought you were never going to come out of there,” Pidge snorted.  
Another lightning bolt of pain stretched across his back and he resisted the urge to hunch forward. Lance was wearing a loose-fitting sweater in the hopes that the blue petals would be hidden beneath the thick, roomy fabric.  
Normally in situations like these, he could feel the tickle of Red telling him that everything would be okay, or Blue’s distant purring filtered through Allura’s thoughts. Allura was preoccupied with picking at her plate of food. Lance found himself staring in her direction, silently pleading for a whisper of comfort from his old Lion.  
“Uh, Lance, buddy? Is there a reason you’re staring at the princess...?” Hunk nudged Lance’s arm.  
White hot fire crept up his neck and he panicked, pulling the collar of his sweater up to his chin. He stood abruptly, accidentally overturned his bowl of green goop, and darted frantically for his room. The blue flowers were blooming rapidly over the fresh cuts that had formed along his neck.

 

Keith watched, bewildered, as Lance fled the room in a cyclone of lanky limbs. The dining hall door slid shut and the paladins and Alteans exchanged worried glances.  
“What the hell was that about?” Keith murmured.  
Pidge shrugged a shoulder, clearly disinterested and continued tapping away at the latest gadget she had strapped to her wrist.  
Hunk made a move to follow Lance but Shiro, who had stood to circle the table, placed a firm hand on his shoulder.  
“I think this calls for an intervention,” Shiro announced.  
Allura hummed in agreement, nodding enthusiastically;  
“That sounds like a brilliant idea, Shiro. Paladins, we’ll meet in the common area tomorrow to decide how we will go about this. Hunk, I’m counting on you to make  
sure Lance attends our meeting.”  
Coran raised a finger, as if he were about to say something, then thought better of it, twisting his moustache anxiously. The elder Altean had a sneaking suspicion that this was more than just Lance’s depression...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here's my first fic on this site.
> 
> yell at me on tumblr @ junkersneverdie.tumblr.com
> 
> \---------------  
> mi hijo = my son  
> mi azulejo = my bluebird
> 
> (please correct me if my Spanish is wrong, I only have two years of Spanish under my belt and I rely heavily on the internet!)


	2. Sprout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things go from bad to worse when Coran discovers a blue flower in the hallway.  
> Lance is dragged to an intervention.  
> Keith reminisces.  
> \--------------------  
> Content warning: mild blood and gore  
> More to come in future chapters.

Keith wandered into the laboratory where Coran was shuffling around, tinkering with various colored liquids in teardrop-shaped beakers. A shock of red hair bobbed up for a second behind lab equipment before ducking back down again.

“Keith, my boy! You’re just in time for my latest experiment.”

He allowed a half smile to creep across his usually stoic face. Coran’s latest obsession was ‘science.’ To the Earthlings, what he managed to create in his mad-science lab was fascinating. To Allura, it was like a kid making a potato clock – fun, but not very impressive.  
Today’s experiment seemed to involve a brightly colored flower that sat inside a glass box. It’s blue petals looked despondent, curling in on themselves. Clearly, it had been plucked from the ground quite some time ago.

“I found this odd specimen lying in the hallway,” Coran explained, twirling his moustache, “I couldn’t find it in any Altean herbology volumes, so I’ve been running a number of experiments on it to determine its origin!”

“How did it get on the ship?” Keith questioned with a raise of an eyebrow. 

He bent down to look closer at the flower. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought the material encrusted on the edges of the petals was human blood.

“Hey, whats-”

Keith glanced up to find that Coran had dashed across to the other side of the room and was busy pouring a sickly green fluid into a container balanced precariously above an Altean version of a Bunsen burner. 

“Easy does it.” Coran’s tongue was jammed firmly between his teeth, eyes squinting with concentration. 

He removed the container from the flame with a pair of tongs and hopped over to the flower. Keith watched with growing curiosity as Coran dumped the contents of the beaker into the glass box.  
The flower seemed unaffected by the deluge except for a dark green steam that emanated from where the liquid had made contact. Coran, however, was greatly affected by this outcome.

“What’s wrong?” Keith straightened and studied Coran’s face.  
“That should have destroyed any plant matter in the known universe.”

 

Lance buried his head further under his pillow; his space pillow....his definitely-not-Earth pillow that was filled with God-knows-what. Someone – probably Shiro or Allura – had been banging on his door for the past varga and a half and it was starting to give him a splitting headache.

“Go the FUCK away.” He hurled the pillow at the door. 

It made a dull thump that halted the pounding for a few ticks before it started back up again. 

“Lance, come on,” A muffled voice pleaded from the other side.

Keith?  
Lance frowned. Why would Keith want to talk to him?  
_We don’t have time for you to act like a child._  
He was the useless paladin, the childish one, the one who shouldn’t have been chosen. He felt his face heat up as tears threatened to gather. He darted out of bed, retrieved the pillow, and huddled back into the warm space he’d left before it had a chance to get cold.  
Lance hugged it to his chest and sighed.

“I’ll just have Pidge hack the door if you don’t open up!”

Goddamn persistent mullet-headed-

Keith blinked in surprise when the door slid open. Lance looked.... well, he’d looked better. Blotches of acne were beginning to appear along his jawline and nose. He probably hadn’t slept very well, if at all, judging by the heavy bags decorating his eyes.  
Something felt wrong in Keith’s chest and he rubbed at the spot absently. 

“Hey, do you want to go to the common room? We’re playing that board game Pidge found in the storage room.”

Lance had every intention of saying ‘no thanks’ if it weren’t for the object pinned to the collar of Keith’s shirt that made his blood run cold.  
A blue flower, pristine and bright was pinned to Keith’s shirt, right at the spot where Lance’s had begun to bloom.  
Keith noticed the blood had drained from Lance’s face and reached out a hand to steady him, “Uh, you okay?”  
Lance nodded numbly.

“Oh, I’m good, just peachy keen jelly bean, I’ll uh. Be there in a second.”

The door slid shut in Keith’s face and his hand hung in the air where Lance’s shoulder had been.  
On the one hand, that was the most Lance-like thing Lance had said all week. On the other hand, he looked like he’d just seen a ghost.

 

Lance stood in the front of the mirror, his shirt cast aside. Flowers bloomed across his skin, large and small, covering the unsightly wounds that had marred his flesh. His hands were shaking as he took hold of one of the flowers. It was either his imagination, or he could almost _feel_ with the petals of the flower growing from his skin. He wanted to close his eyes, but he forced himself to watch as he slowly pulled the flower free. Lance’s teeth sank into his bottom lip to stop himself from screaming. Bits of flesh clung to the roots of the flower as he pulled. The roots were tangled deep underneath his skin and the more he pulled, the more skin and meat were pulled up. It was like pulling a weed only instead of clumps of soil, clumps of muscle and blood clung to the roots.  
Finally, the offending flower was removed. He dropped it into the sink and turned the tap on, washing the blood from his hands. Okay, so it wasn’t going to be that easy to pull them off. Thick trails of blood were running down his chest and stomach, staining the waistband of his pants. He opened the drawers below the sink and rummaged for something he could use to snip off the blossoms. Something that sort of looked like scissors was buried under a pack of alien q-tips. It had a single blade with a circle on the end to hold onto. Better than nothing.  
Lance hacked off the remaining petals leaving small green thorn-like protrusions in his skin. He couldn’t quite reach some of the blooms on his back, but he figured he’d cut enough off that it wouldn’t be noticeable. After washing off the blood and crudely bandaging his now open wound, he made himself somewhat presentable. He really didn’t want to socialize, but Keith was giving him no choice... how could he say no to those eyes, even if that mouth hurt him so often?

**One Year Earlier**

“FUCK.”

The rock Keith kicked went sailing into the side of the red lion and fell with a dull thud to the sand. It had been nearly a quintent since he’d found himself stranded – again – with no contact to the Castle of Lions. This time, he wasn’t alone, however. This time, he had-

“Hey mullet, check out this cool bug I found!”

Lance, the idiot, McClain. Keith rolled his eyes into his skull so hard, he was convinced they were going to roll out of his sockets.

“Lance, I’m a little busy trying to figure out how the hell we’re going to get out of here.”

The other paladin seemed oblivious to his anger, running along the beach in pursuit of a bright emerald bug. Keith sighed and scratched the nape of his neck. Well, if you can’t beat him....

“Hey, wait up!” Keith sheathed his blade and dashed after Lance, kicking up sand.

Join him.

Lance rested his hands on his knees and panted, flicking his brown bangs out of his face. He needed a haircut...maybe he could convince Allura to trim his hair again. If they ever got back to the ship. He straightened and looked over his shoulder to see a whirl of black Marmora armor coming toward him.

“Uh oh,” was what he would have said if the wind hadn’t been knocked out of him by a flying Keith. 

A spray of sand engulfed them both as they fell into the sand. Keith rolled off his taller counterpart and a peal of laughter erupted from his chest, like windchimes. Lance stared at him, incredulous. He couldn’t remember ever hearing Keith laugh like that. Or laugh at all, for that matter.

“What?” Keith’s laughter quieted down, and he glared at Lance’s beet red face.

“Nothing! Nothing at all.” A shit-eating grin dominated his face. 

Without a second thought, he deposited the green bug on Keith’s shirt. If his laughter was rare, the ear-piercing shriek that exploded from Keith was even rarer.  
Lance scrambled to his feet, like a baby horse trying to find his legs, and took off wildly across the sand toward the red Lion. 

**Present Day**

Keith was startled from his thoughts by a cold Galran-metal hand on his shoulder. He looked up into the eyes of his former leader, shadowed by a lack of sleep. No one on the ship had slept as little as Shiro had. He looked like he needed a bathtub full of coffee to get through this intervention. 

“You okay?” Shiro’s grey eyes were soft.

Keith shrugged a shoulder. 

“Thinking.”

Shiro nodded and hummed thoughtfully as if he understood what Keith was thinking about. Sometimes Keith wondered if the older former paladin could read minds. He always seemed to be able to pinpoint what was bothering Keith. He prayed to whatever deity existed in this fucked up universe that he could not read his mind currently. 

Allura sat across from Keith on the opposite semicircle of cushions. Her leg was crossed over her knee and her back was perfectly straight. She was the image of poise and grace, save for the hand she had brought to her face and the single fingernail she was worriedly gnawing on between her teeth. Pidge seated next to her was bouncing her leg up and down, eyes staring into the middle distance. To Pidge’s left, Hunk held his face in his hands, a tray of peace offerings – cookies – lay cooling on the cushion beside him. Shiro took a seat next to Keith and the waiting game began.

Coran was elected to retrieve Lance from his room. Unsurprisingly, the two kookiest of characters on the ship had grown close – especially after Lance saved his life from an explosion. The older Altean was one of the only members of ‘Team Voltron’ that cared enough following Lance’s stay in the cryopod to check and make sure that he was alright. 

“Lance? Lance, my boy,” Coran rapped his knuckles on the door for the umpteenth time with no response.

This time, he detected a faint groan of exasperation from the other side of the flat metal surface.  
Abruptly, the door slid open and Lance looked ready to kill someone. 

“Ah, so you are awake.” Coran smiled sheepishly.  
Only his trembling mustache gave away his fear.

Lance spun dramatically on his heel and flopped face first onto his bed.

“Coran, I’m having _feelings_.” Lance did his best 21st century Grinch impression, flinging a hand into the air above his planking body.  
“I don’t think I understand?” Coran frowned and wandered into the paladin’s room. He sat backwards at his desk chair and observed the human as he rolled over onto his back.  
“This isn’t just about Earth – I mean, I can barely process that its all just...gone. That’s going to take me a while.”  
Coran nodded, “Lance, sometimes I forget Altea is gone.” 

Lance sat up and met Coran’s gaze. He bit his lip and fought back another onslaught of tears. He didn’t want the others to know how much of a crybaby he was being.

“We all have to be strong right now. Even Allura is hurting... she was hoping for a new start with all of us on Earth.”

He turned his face away from Coran and stared at the photograph of his familia pinned to the wall above his bed. Gone. Every single last person that ever gave a shit about him was gone. Before he realized what he’d done, his knuckles were bleeding and the photograph was lying on his pillow. A dent had been made in the wall by Lance’s fist.  
Panic consumed him and he sprang to his feet, ready to lock himself in his bathroom, but it was too late. Small green shoots were already pushing through from the open patches of skin on his hand.

“What...” Coran started, his eyes growing wide as the small plants began to swell and blue buds formed like a strange set of brass knuckles made from flowers. 

“I can explain?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coran is my favorite, okay, let me have this.  
> Lance is secretly just as angsty as Keith and we all know it.  
> I'm still learning the formatting on this site, bear with me.
> 
> yell at me on tumblr @ junkersneverdie.tumblr.com


End file.
